December 2011
13 posts
1 tag
True happiness is found in dependence on God
Every attempt to squeeze a reason for living out of this world in isolation from its Creator ultimately runs dry, leaving the idolater unfulfilled, frustrated, and bitter. The insufficiency of creation is a billboard for the sufficiency of God. He alone can meet our deepest needs.
God’s insistence that he alone be worshipped, so that our exercise of dominion [over the creation] is done...
1 tag
Christmas Future
Not in that poor lowly stable
With the oxen standing by
We shall see Him but in heaven
Set at God’s right hand on high
When like stars His children crowned
All in white shall wait around
1 tag
“The world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but...”
– T. S. Eliot in an essay in 1930
2 tags
“The empire of grace will forever expand and every moment will be better than the...”
–
Ray Ortlund Jr on Isaiah 9:7
The Bible frees us from self-obsession
The message of the Bible provides the only answer to humanity’s most pressing need: to know God himself. Having been created by God for God, the ‘self’ can never be ‘self-satisfied’. Yet, having lost sight of the God revealed in the Bible, all we can see is itself, with its futile drive to meet its own ever-changing but never satisfied cravings for the second-rate...
1 tag
The Bible will let you breathe
In the midst of the suffocating self-love of our modern and postmodern culture, the Bible is clear that our real hunger is to know the one true God revealed in its pages. Only in doing so will we satisfy our cravings for security (faith), find the purpose for which we exist (hope), and be able to live free from slavery to self (love).
To meet these needs, we must return to the Bible. It...
“My endeavour is to bring out of scripture what is there, and not thrust in what...”
–
Charles Simeon
1 tag
Art for God's Sake
Art has tremendous power to shape culture and touch the human heart. Its artifacts embody the ideas and desires of the coming generation. This means that what is happening in the arts today is prophetic of what will happen in our culture tomorrow. It also means that when Christians abandon the artistic community, we lose a significant opportunity to communicate Christ to our culture....
1 tag
“no one wears the political pants of history unless yahweh issues them to him”
– Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation, p 53
1 tag
What a wonderful world...
“If you think God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live through the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.”
- Kevin De Young, ‘Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s...
“Spoke to him yesterday morning. Why! Why. Why!! I’ll miss him so much. He...”
– Robbie Savage, tweeting on the suicide of footballer Gary Speed
Why did Gary Speed commit suicide? We don't know
Many have sought a handle on disparate tragedies, a rationalising narrative to make sense of it all. Perhaps there is none. But one thing we may conclude is that the “dream”, whatever else it may provide the person living it, is no panacea.
Fame, money, glory and the other superficialities so prized by modern society do not inoculate a person from the deeper, more complex and more...
